Tag: politics

Typing just [Enter] key into the Search box makes it easy to browse WordPress blogs like this one. Here, the [Menu] button (atop the vertical black bar) reveals widgets like the Search box.

Yes, the fighter jock on the left is also the married mom on the right. This image is a screenshot from the Amy McGrath for Congress website, which is worth a visit from anybody who appreciates clear and communicative web design (whether or not they care about US politics).

After retiring from the Marine Corps (at the rank of Lt Colonel), Amy McGrath found a new challenge: running for Congress as a Democrat in Kentucky. It’s not easy. Neither was flying 89 combat missions.

Dunno whether McGrath is as progressive as I am, but I believe she has the confidence and smarts to avoid the Democrats’ common mistake running like decaffeinated Republicans in red states. Some evidence is provided by the form (as well as the content) of the announcement video Told Me, which can be seen on the website and has made a splash on YouTube. When was the last time U saw a campaign kickoff that was also a good short (2 minutes) film? I like the calmly assertive no-nonsense tone thruout and the final image shown in the screenshot below.

The party affiliation is stated clearly, w/o fuss. The image background is a subtle rebuttal of the common misconception that Dems are intrinsically wimpy, if not downright unpatriotic. The subtlety is important. Those who explicitly mention a misconception (even while refuting it) risk strengthening it in the minds of those they are trying to enlighten. Good logic may not be good rhetoric. Dunno how many good rhetorical details of the video and the website are there because McGrath put them in herself and how many are there because McGrath chose and trusted well-qualified people. Either way, seeing such competence is a hopeful glimmer in a dark time.

Please visit Amy McGrath for Congress and watch the video. U can see some good stuff w/o spending much time. Those willing and able to donate just might get the satisfaction of helping a Marine kick some Trumpublican ass.

Typing just [Enter] key into the Search box makes it easy to browse WordPress blogs like this one. Here, the [Menu] button (atop the vertical black bar) reveals widgets like the Search box.

I row against the current. My oar bends. Will it break?

« Current ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #97 »
Thru a haze of fatigue, my mind drifts to a far away place and long ago time. To Salamis. I remember the ancient Greek navy, the mostly Athenian “wooden wall” that defied long odds to save Western civilization. Salvation is not permanent.

I cannot draw to save a life, and it is hard to find a trireme to photograph on short notice. I used an image I did not create because something about triremes really matters now.

The rowers in Greek triremes were citizens rowing to defend their communities, not galley slaves rowing to avoid the lash. Tho they could not see the Persian ships they needed to ram, they could trust their leaders to see and steer. Themistocles owed nothing to Xerxes.

Here and now, rowing as a citizen is more complicated. The peril is a strong current (stealthy as metastasis) that surges around breakwaters. What is there to ram? Will the rowers be swept out to sea while squabbling over which cove to head for? Are the leaders loyal and competent? What does Trump owe to Putin?

I row against the current. I am not alone.

Update [2017-07-30]

Here is a good example of rowing against the current that has gotten less publicity than it deserves. Senator Mazie Hirono [Dem-HI] interrupted treatment for stage 4 kidney cancer to speak eloquently and vote against the latest pseudoconservative travesty of healthcare legislation. U can read more details and hear the speech (under 5 minutes) by clicking here. U can sign a petition to thank her by clicking here.

Typing just [Enter] key into the Search box makes it easy to browse WordPress blogs like this one. Here, the [Menu] button (atop the vertical black bar) reveals widgets like the Search box.

The image atop this post comes from a new reading of the classic Langston Hughes poem Let America Be America Again, published in 1936. On one hand, it is discouraging that the poem is still so timely. Indeed, a speech from 1910 by Theodore Roosevelt is still timely and sounds remarkably like what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are saying today. We have frittered away so much of the hard-won partial progress made since 1910 and 1936. On the other hand, …

Slavomir Rawicz planned and led a small group’s escape from a prison camp in the Siberian Gulag in 1941. About 9 months and 3000 miles later, the 4 survivors reached safety in India, having walked (with a little crudely improvised equipment and w/o maps) thru Siberian snow, the Gobi Desert, and high passes in the Himalayas. Details are in his book The Long Walk.

There are many sane and decent people in the USA, and some of them may have the grit and ingenuity of Slavomir Rawicz and his companions. In my own small way, I will try to help and will keep Yogi Berra’s Law in mind.

Having flown my flag inverted (as a protest) for a few days after the electoral disaster of 2016, I put it away. The meaning of inversion would no longer be clear. In the spring of 2017, I bought a new flag (larger and US-made) for occasions like July 4th, when flying the flag upright would not look so much like general approval of the way things are going. Ceding patriotic symbols to bigots and plutocrats would be a tactical error.

Maybe I should be doing other things today, but I came across the new reading of the poem. Despite not having burst mode on my camera, I then lucked into a good snapshot of my flag waving proudly. As usual, I teared up when a radio station played The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Tonight, I will both smile and yawn when neighborhood fireworks keep me up late. Tomorrow, the sane and decent people can return to the work of redeeming the promise of this day.

This post’s subtitle is slightly oversimplified. Apart from deliberate and obvious ambiguity in language jokes, ambiguity is almost always unwanted and at least a little harmful to clear communication. It can be disastrous. Suppose I write something ambiguous that I interpret one way. Suppose the reader interprets it differently w/o noticing the ambiguity. (Verbal ambiguities tend to be much less obvious than visual ones.) Maybe the reader just writes me off as a jerk. Maybe the reader objects in a way that makes no sense to me because I also do not notice the ambiguity. Maybe we eventually sort it all out after wasting time in an unpleasant exchange; maybe not. Ambiguous language can act as if the artist in the famous duck/rabbit illusion sees only the duck while the viewer sees only the rabbit.

Don’t context and common sense make it obvious how to resolve ambiguities in real life? Yes and no. Speech among native speakers on familiar topics may be safe, especially if the conversation has many redundancies and/or few surprizes. In a casual setting, a hearer who notices an ambiguity can request and get a clarification in real time. Not all settings are casual. Not all ambiguities are noticed. After briefly considering a setting quite unlike casual speech, we will ponder how to cope with ambiguity in the vast middle ground between utterly casual speech and utterly formal prose.

That English has become the global language of science is convenient for anglophones like me. A few centuries ago, I would have needed to read and write in Latin to communicate with colleagues who did not speak English when asking what’s for dinner. Now I can write in English, but I must be mindful that readers may not be native speakers and may not understand slang and topical references (especially if I write something still worth reading some years from now). Common sense will not help readers decide what I really mean if I garble something new and contrary to conventional wisdom.

Blog posts land in a wide swath of middle ground. Some are close to casual speech; some are researched and/or crafted. Some are for venting or sharing a self-explanatory image; some do try to say something new and contrary to conventional wisdom. Much of the care taken by good science writers to avoid ambiguity is also appropriate to some blog posts. Personally, I find it easier (as well as safer) to make being careful habitual rather than decide whether it really matters in each specific case.

This post’s examples deal with lexicographic ambiguity. They are good for displaying how a readabilist perspective differs from a descriptivist or prescriptivist perspective. They are also conveniently short, so I will devote a little space to historical remarks inspired by one of Lynch’s chapters on lexicography.

Chapter 10 begins with a humorous account of the absurdly apocalyptic reaction to the publication of a dictionary in 1961. True, it was not just any dictionary. It was Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (hereafter just “Webster’s 3-rd”), and it was more explicitly descriptive (rather than prescriptive) than its predecessor. As Lynch explains in detail, good dictionaries had always been more descriptive than those who were shocked by Webster’s 3-rd noticed. But Webster’s 3-rd took descriptivism past a tipping point. Was it open to specific objections about how common (and/or harmless?) some mistakes must be, before they should be just be listed as alternative usages w/o being stigmatized in any way? Yes. Was it part of a vast left-wing conspiracy to repopulate the world with licentious ninnies? No. Many critics really were that wacky, as Lynch reminded me.

The furor led to the 1962 publication of a compilation by Sledd and Ebbitt of essays pro and con, with the title Dictionaries and That Dictionary. Reading and reacting to that compilation was the best part of the AP English class that capped my high school education. I came down hard for descriptivism, w/o noticing many amusing ironies that Lynch points out. Some of the alleged crimes of Webster’s 3-rd had already been committed by the revered Webster’s 2-nd, which had been marketed with authoritarian hype that came back to haunt the publisher in the furor over Webster’s 3-rd.

Lynch’s book came out in 2009, much closer on the calendar to 2017 than to 1961. Calendar distance can be misleading. In 2009, the USA was still one of many countries where authoritarian rants could be laughed off. They did not come from the White House.

Example 5.1: Tummy Troubles

On pages 223 and 224 (hardcover), Lynch uses 3 words to illustrate how a rival dictionary that began as a knee-jerk prescriptivist alternative to Webster’s 3-rd evolved into a rational one. The same words illustrate the kind of rule a readabilist can recommend.

Consider 3 things I might conceivably say about Donald Trump:

He is nauseating.

He is nauseated.

He is nauseous.

Items #1 and #2 are clear. But what if I said #3? From a correct assumption about my politics (and an incorrect assumption about a fondness for older usages), U could infer that #3 from me means what #1 means. But #3 from somebody else (who likes newer usages and was a dinner guest at the White House) could well mean what #2 means. However loudly prescriptivists might claim that [nauseous] “really” means what [nauseating] means, the word [nauseous] is hopelessly ambiguous in the real world. I cannot imagine any situation where this particular ambiguity would be wanted, so I offer a rule:

Never use the word [nauseous].
Use what clearly says whatever U want to say.

Please be assured that I am well aware of the wisdom in the old saying

Never say [never]!

and once was in a situation where I did want to write ambiguously. But not about tummy troubles.

Example 5.2: Accidental Arson

People for whom English is a second language sometimes say things that native speakers never say. I have a CD of Chinese music with a track list that displays a translation of each track’s title from Chinese into English. One of the translations is [Blue Little Flower]. Before seeing that mistake, I had not noticed that native speakers of English put size before color (as in [Little Red Hen] or [big blue eyes]). The mistaken translation is harmless in the CD track list; I only bring it up to show that nonnative speakers may blunder in ways that native speakers would not.

Suppose I tell the translator that toluene is “inflammable” w/o further explanation. Suppose the translator is familiar with some pairs of adjectives like [accessible]/[inaccessible] and [voluntary]/[involuntary] (and many more between these). Suppose the translator looks up [flammable] in an English/Chinese dictionary, extrapolates from the usual effect on meaning of prefixing [i][n] to an adjective, and thinks it safe to have a smoke in a room reeking of glue fumes. Oops.

Likely? No. Possible? Yes. At best, to say or write [inflammable] wastes a syllable or 2 keystrokes. A tiny downside is certain, a huge downside is possible, and there is no upside (unless U want to write weird poetry).

Never use the word [inflammable].
It may be ambiguous to nonnative speakers.

Typing just [Enter] key into the Search box makes it easy to browse WordPress blogs like this one. Here, the [Menu] button (atop the vertical black bar) reveals widgets like the Search box.

Descriptivism, Prescriptivism, and ????

Here are links to previous posts in this project of reviewing and supplementing the splendid book The Lexicographer’s Dilemma by Jack Lynch.

Introduction
What does the rise of “proper” English have in common with a physics conundrum about gravity?

Babies, Names, and Snobs
We name words by wrapping them in square brackets to avoid overloading more common conventions.

One trouble with categories is that so many of the interesting and important people and things in the real world do not fit neatly into them. Tho wary of categories, I feel a need to introduce another one, alongside the descriptivism and prescriptivism (reviewed below) that are commonly used to categorize writings/writers that deal with the English language.

To oversimplify somewhat:

A descriptivist says how people actually use the language.

A prescriptivist says how people should use the language, according to various rules.

The captions on the following images for these attitudes link to notes and credits at the end of this post.

One of the strengths of Lynch’s book is that most of the time it is so fair to both. Lynch is mostly in the descriptivist camp, but he sees merit in some prescriptivist ideas and explores the absurdities of trying to be 100% one or the other.

Perhaps some of the more thoughtful people on both sides are implicitly in another category, which I will call [readabilism] until somebody suggests a name I like better that is not already in use.

Still being simplistic to get started, here is what I mean by [readabilism].

A readabilist says how people should use the language, so as to communicate clearly.

Communicating clearly is not the same as abiding by rules. Do U want to be clear? Some of the prescriptivists’ rules are helpful, as is attention to the descriptivists’ findings. Some of the prescriptivists’ rules are harmful, as is being lazy in ways that descriptivists find to be common. As with geometry, there is no royal road to clarity. Various examples will be in later posts. A quick preliminary example appears later in this post.

I am a proud readabilist. I try to write clearly. I fail and try again. Sometimes I succeed. I try to recommend ways to write clearly. I fail and try again. I will recommend a prescriptivist’s rule that seems helpful and disrecommend one that seems harmful. If something seems helpful in one context and harmful in another, I will try to sort things out rather than claim that one size fits all.

Any suggestions of alternative names for readabilism? I was disappointed when Google told me that [lucidism] is already in use as the name of a religion, as is [claritism]. [Communicationism] is a pejorative term for the kind of reductionism that attributes conflicts to failures of communication. I had better grab [readabilism] while I can.

Example 3.1: Split Infinitives

On page 19, Lynch scorches the extreme prescriptivists who make sweeping bogus claims about enhancing clarity for long lists of rules, including inanities like the rule against splitting an infinitive. This rule was made up by prigs with too much free time who were enamored of Latin, a language with no blank space inside an infinitive where anything might be inserted.

Prescriptivists who claim devotion to clarity while peddling such drivel remind me of pseudoconservatives in US politics, who claim devotion to fiscal responsibility while peddling tax cuts for the same tiny fraction of the population that has been siphoning away wealth from everybody else for decades (while the national debt increases).

Tho the rhetoric of extreme prescriptivists may sound readabilist, the conduct is definitely not readabilist. Fretting about where else to put an adverb that wants to follow [to] may not be directly harmful, but it siphons away time and energy from serious work on clarity.

Image Notes and Credits

An antenna from the array in a radio telescope is emblematic of the spirit of descriptivism. Let’s see what is out there (and maybe try to explain it).

The clothes and facial expression of the man making the thumb-down gesture suggest that he is an arrogant jerk. This caricature of prescriptivism is appropriate at this admittedly simplistic stage in the discussion (and at any stage for some extreme prescriptivists). Nuance will come later.

Back in 2013, I photographed a daylily flower in my yard because I wanted to show it to a flower lover in a nursing home. I did not want to be at all arty. I just wanted her to see the flower clearly and completely, w/o puzzling about what I had photographed or about the technologies that let me show her a long-gone flower on my laptop computer. I wanted the wizardry to be transparent and therefore invisible to the casual eye.

The clear view (thru the photo to see the daylily) is emblematic of the spirit of readabilism. While it is OK if the reader pauses briefly a few times to admire how well an idea has been conveyed, the reader should never need a shovel to unearth ideas buried by obscure writing.

Typing just [Enter] key into the Search box makes it easy to browse WordPress blogs like this one. Here, the [Menu] button (atop the vertical black bar) reveals widgets like the Search box.

Wish I knew how. Some of the ways being tried look promising to me; some look counterproductive. In roughly descending order of promise, I will list 10 of them and add sad emojis for the 3 counterproductive items that end the list. Pressed for time? Read #1 and #2 (the most promising items); then skip ahead to #9 and #10 (the most counterproductive items).

First, let me say where I am coming from. In ancient times (before the phrase liberal Republican became an oxymoron), progressives could be Republicans. Tho imperfect, that option made sense for pragmatic progressives who disliked deficits, knew how the road to Hell is paved, and would not kowtow to “conservative Democrats” (white racists in what was then the “Solid South”) for the sake of party unity. In ancient times, I was a Republican. Now I am a Sanders/Warren Democrat who also donates to the Working Families Party. That imperfect option is the best available for me today.

America has changed a lot more than I have. Many changes for the better are in imminent danger of being undone. Many changes for the worse accelerated when George W Bush became POTUS, were slowed but not stopped under Obama, and have accelerated drastically under Donald Trump. Paranoia is not one of my faults; I hope I am mistaken in seeing a clear and present danger to liberal democracy itself (on top of 4+ years of monumentally bad governance) in the Age of Trumpery.

Tea Party Tactics
The all-too successful efforts of the Tea Party to obstruct Obama’s agenda included many tactics that could also be used by honorable people to obstruct Trump’s. Some progressive former Congressional staffers have compiled the Indivisible Guide for badgering legislators. In addition to many helpful refinements of what I already vaguely knew, the guide has an insight so jolting that I will discuss it separately, after this list.

Voting Rights
There are many ways to prevent elections from throwing the bums out. Savvy modern tyrants need not be so crude as to refuse to hold elections or refuse to let any serious opponents campaign. Republican state legislators have raised gerrymandering to a high art, passed voter ID laws carefully tailored to depress voting by “conservatives” much less than voting by other groups, and so on. Election administrators can open fewer polling places in areas where the “wrong” kind of voters are common.

One of the many ways that the ACLU defends civil liberties is by filing lawsuits against such shenanigans. Please support the ACLU and anybody else who defends voting rights. For more on subtle ways that voting rights can be hollowed out behind a facade of democracy, see While Democrats Chase Russians, Republicans Keep Rigging Elections by Richard Eskow.

State & Local Elections
Far too many progressives act as if voting for POTUS once every 4 years would suffice to make good things happen. Government in the USA is not that simple. Pseudoconservatives also pay attention down-ballot and in off years. It shows. Our fragmented system makes it extremely difficult for POTUS alone to get much done that is worth doing. Down-ballot results in one election can also have nasty consequences up-ballot in the next one.

Boycotting Trump-branded Stuff
Tho Trump’s claim to be a “successful businessman” is a wild exaggeration, he does care about money. The website #GRABYOURWALLET lists many casinos, hotels, products, and retailers. With careful reading of the website’s spreadsheet, U can separate the retailers who actively push Trump-branded products (or otherwise support Trump) from those who just sell them along with various competitive products. Boycotting the retailers who just sell them is counterproductive.

Protest Marches
They seem to have mobilized and heartened opposition, but I cannot help wondering how many of those who march and shout now were perfectionists then, when many progressive purists refused to hold their noses and support the only alternative to Trump who could have won on 2016-11-08. I hope nobody thinks that denouncing Trump in a raucous crowd is as good as thwarting him.

My big worry is that protest marches will become old news and that some protestors will try to freshen them up by marching w/o permits, snarling traffic, provoking cops to overreact, and so on. The resulting legal battles will divert resources from the defense of voting rights.

Ridiculing Trump
Intense and well-deserved ridicule did not keep Trump out of the White House. It is hard to ridicule Trump w/o also ridiculing his supporters. I must confess to having sometimes yielded to temptation on this point. But anything that is perceived as ridicule will only delay the awakening of those Trump voters who are not bigots or plutocrats but who had good cause to feel abandoned by smug neoliberals and turned to Trump in desperation.

On the other hand, years of relentless attacks on Hillary Clinton eventually built up an exaggerated and indelible image of dishonesty. (Tho far from being a paragon of integrity, HRC is relatively honest, as pols go. The last paragon at the presidential level was Abraham Lincoln, whose honesty did not preclude being calculating and shrewd.) Maybe years of apt and varied ridicule can accomplish something beyond catharsis for snipers like me.

Fact Checking
Copious documentation of staggering mendacity did not keep Trump out of the White House. That those who ridicule Trump are more likely to amuse each other than erode his support is sad but not shocking. That much of the electorate does not give a rat’s ass for truth is another story. As with ridicule, I see some small hope that years of hammering away may eventually break thru.

Calls for Impeachment 😦
The question is not whether Trump deserves to be impeached and convicted. He does. So what? Impeachment and conviction cannot happen unless both the House and the Senate are flipped. Suppose that unlikely event happens in 2018. Trump’s term would be served out by Mike Pence, whose agenda is just as vile. By being less abrasive than Trump, Pence might be even more effective in pushing for bad laws and lulling people into accepting thinly veiled fascism.

Centrism 😦 😦
Obviously, the Democratic Party must somehow reach out to the Reagan Democrats who came back for Obama but did not stay back for Clinton. How to do that is controversial. Despite my own broadly centrist inclinations, I believe it would be a huge mistake now to take any more advice from Third Way or anybody else who thinks Dems can win by sounding at all like decaffeinated Republicans. Dems need a coherent progressive alternative that seriously addresses Rust Belt concerns, not an echo of Republican quackery pasted onto support for LGBTQ/reproductive rights and sanity about guns. While I do support those rights and that sanity, I am starting to understand why they have so little traction.

Normalizing Trump 😦 😦 😦
Exhortations to come together after a bitterly contested election are a venerable American tradition, dating back to Jefferson’s inaugural address in 1801. Still in shock on 2016-11-09, I reblogged an eloquent one. At the same time, I reblogged a very different reaction that was also eloquent. It was a struggle to work out my own subtler response with a look back to 1814.

Looking back not quite so far as 1814, I recall that paranoid slave owners violently rejected the results of the 1860 election. That did not end well. Looking just a little ways back, I recall my own anger at McConnell’s nauseating pledge to subordinate governing to making Obama a 1-term POTUS, after Obama won in 2008 w/o any help from vote suppression or Russian meddling.

Putting this item last in the list was painful, but not as painful as seeing Trump confirm a truckload of grim expectations (bigotry; chaos; corruption; …) within a month of inauguration. A wait-and-see attitude did make sense on 2016-11-09. It does not make sense today. Will the sane and decent people in the USA wait until it is too late to avoid covert fascism behind a facade of democracy?

What is the jolting insight mentioned in list item #1? When opposing a nasty Trump initiative that advances a subversive hidden agenda, do not (repeat—not!) try be constructive by offering a better way to deal with whatever problem the Trump initiative purports to address. Keep the opposition to Trump broadly based and unified, focused on the vileness of the snake oil and not distracted by internal debates about what should be done instead of swallowing snake oil.

I come from the very collegial culture of STEM and can remember when American politics was less adversarial and more collegial than it is now, tho never as collegial as STEM. (Yes, there are rivalries in STEM and maybe still a few chances to do some good by reaching across the aisle in politics.) Tho jolting and saddening, the advice to oppose w/o trying to be constructive is wise.

Does my claim in list item #9 that “Dems need a coherent progressive alternative that seriously addresses Rust Belt concerns” contradict that advice? No. Context is crucial. Trying to prevent a particular criminal folly by those currently in office is one context. Trying to elect officials who are much less likely to engage in criminal folly is another context.

Image published in the US before 1923 and public domain in the US

In some ways, the American Experiment is back in 1778: hanging by a thread (in what Thomas Paine rightly said were “times that try men’s souls”). Many images of Valley Forge would be appropriate; I especially like the well-known painting by Edwin Austin Abbey of Baron von Steuben instructing George Washington’s pickup army in carefully selected European tactics/techniques that would help it win.

Washington’s eye for talent looked beyond billionaires who had donated lavishly. Washington did not tweet jabs at “Krauts” while assuming that anybody who sounded like a Hessian was on the other side. Washington saw that an immigrant from Prussia could kick ass for the cause. The rest is history.

Mother : How was school today?
Small Child : Fun. Teacher showed us how to make babies.
Mother : What? WHAT?
Small Child : Drop the Y and add IES.

In casual speech, we can insert “the word” in a few places. That is clunky in extended writing. There are 2 common ways to do the job in writing: quote marks and italics. Using quote marks works well in short documents, but it can be confusing in longer ones that also use quote marks for actual quotations and/or for sarcasm, as in

After an ad blitz from the National Rifle Association rescued his failing campaign, Senator Schmaltz “bravely” defended the right of crazy people to buy assault weapons.

Maybe we should follow Lynch and use the convention popular among those who are most fastidious about the difference between using a word and discussing it: those who often call it the “use/mention distinction” and put words being mentioned (rather than used) in italics. I do not mind doing w/o italics for emphasis because I prefer bold anyway, but italics are also used for titles and for foreign words temporarily imported into English. I want those uses, and I found that Lynch’s use of italics for multiple purposes in quick succession invited confusion.

There is a simple way to give any word or phrase a name that works well here and in many other contexts, tho not universally. Wrap it in square brackets (or curly braces). Choose the wrapper U never (well, hardly ever) use for some other purpose in the current document and run with it. If both wrappers are OK, use square brackets and give the Shift key a rest.

Now I can avoid confusion, even if I want to be emphatic, be sarcastic, and mention words (marking some as foreign), all in the same sentence:

Some snobs flaunt their “education” by saying [Weltanshauung] when [worldview] is all they need.

While not so disgusting as Senator Schmaltz, the flaunting snobs are enemies of clarity. An enemy of my friend is my enemy too, and clarity is both a very dear friend and a concept crucial to amicable resolution of some of the tensions that Lynch explores so ably. So I want to be especially clear and hope U will forgive the digression into metametalanguage. Will put a quick reminder of the square brackets convention early in each subsequent post. The next one will get down to business.